2 judges make case for legal aid

First jobs as lawyers taught indelible lessons about liberty

A state Supreme Court justice and a chief judge on a federal appeals court emphasized the need to increase access to civil legal aid for people with low incomes at a Legal Services Corp. board meeting in Little Rock on Friday.

The independent nonprofit established by Congress in 1974 to provide financial support for civil legal aid to low-income Americans funds two legal-aid programs in Arkansas -- the Center for Arkansas Legal Services in Little Rock and Legal Aid of Arkansas in Jonesboro.

With a combined staff of 50 attorneys, the two agencies provide direct legal representation for as many as 10,000 people a year who otherwise couldn't afford it, said Robin Wynne, an Arkansas Supreme Court justice.

He told the board members who gathered Thursday and Friday from across the country for the meeting and a related Access to Justice Forum that when he graduated from law school in 1978, he opened a satellite branch of his family's Fordyce law firm in the nearby town of Hampton. At the time, Hampton had 1,200 people and no lawyers.

He set up shop in a renovated one-room "washateria" and grossed $16,000 that year, along with payment in fruits and vegetables from a town with more than its share of poverty.

Forty-three years later, he said, there is only one lawyer practicing in Fordyce, which had 11 lawyers in 1978, and there are no lawyers in Hampton.

"The need still exists, and we have a responsibility to rural Arkansas to provide access to justice," he said, addressing board members and others gathered Friday morning at the Old State House Museum for panel discussions on legal aid in rural America and the business community's role in increasing access to justice.

"The idea of equal access under the law is something that is in our country's DNA," Wynne said, echoing the views of panelists who included the directors of legal aid organizations in Colorado and West Virginia, which also have large rural populations; former fellows of a summer legal partnership to help underserved rural areas across the country; and Amy Pritchard, a professor at the William H. Bowen School of Law in Little Rock.

Lavenski Smith, chief judge of the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was the keynote speaker at a luncheon at the Clinton Presidential Center. He told the group that his first job in the summer of 1987, when he was "wrapping up law school," was as a beginning staff attorney at Ozark Legal Services in Fayetteville.

The salary was only $17,900 a year, but Smith, who wanted to settle in northwest Arkansas, knew immediately upon seeing an ad for the job in the newspaper that it was meant for him.

Smith, now of Little Rock, said that during his first full week on the job, he was assigned two domestic abuse cases.

In the first case, he helped a mother of six children with both fresh and healing bruises obtain a restraining order. It was the first time he had argued before a judge, and it felt good to be successful and help someone. Three weeks later, he learned that his client had returned home to the abusive situation.

Nevertheless, he said, the case jump-started his enthusiasm for his new career.

His second client was a woman with one child who "didn't know how to separate" her legal issues from other life issues. He sorted out the legal issues and gave her references for other issues.

He later was called upon to serve as an ad-litem, a court-appointed attorney for children caught up in divorce and custody cases. He noted that one of every four such appointments in the area was handled by a legal services attorney.

As part of his duty to assess and articulate to the court what he believed was in the best interest of a child he represented, he said he vividly remembers making a home visit in Bentonville.

Smith encountered a severe cockroach infestation and saw that the occupants were using a nonworking toilet, realizing then that the child didn't need to return to the home "just yet," even if that was the child's desire. He called it an "eye-opening" experience in which he understood how children's interests need to be protected.

Smith said that as a legal services attorney, he also enjoyed working on consumer issues, such as helping protect a woman from being evicted when her husband was overseas on a military assignment, and helping people escape debt collectors by writing letters on their behalf citing the Fair Debt Collection Act and having the collectors communicate directly with him.

Smith commended a downloadable handbook that helps people represent themselves in federal court, noting that of about 50,000 appeals in the nation's circuit courts last year, almost half of them were handled pro-se -- by people acting as their own attorneys -- because most people can't afford to hire an attorney.

He also praised the POWER Act of 2018, which requires the chief judge of each federal judicial district to host a public event, at least once each year, to promote pro bono legal services to empower survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking crimes.

He said the program, which is of limited duration and is designed to generate a report to Congress, grew out of legislative findings that 80% of such people who are represented by attorneys obtain injunctions to help protect them from their abusers, while only 32% of those without attorneys obtain a court order.

"How can America truly be a land of liberty if liberties are not truly available to all?" Smith said, thanking those who provide free legal services to poor citizens.

Metro on 02/01/2020

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